


howling around your kitchen door

by Hyacinthus



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen, Loup-garou | Rougarou, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 14:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12483944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthus/pseuds/Hyacinthus
Summary: Something in the swamp wants Bray Wyatt. Bray wants it too.





	howling around your kitchen door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLeaderfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/gifts).



“Sister, there’s a wild hog that’s been running around,” Bray said, kicking off his swamp-encrusted boots. They landed on the wooden floor with two loud thunks, and Bray smiled. He liked the sound. When his boots made big loud noises he thought he was bigger than anything in the bayou. No gator or snake was gonna get him.

“Bray, that ain’t no hog. I told you that before.” Abigail was leaning over the stove. The smell of a roux filled the air, thick and heady. She stirred it with a wooden spoon, watching; satisfied, she placed down next to a neatly plucked chicken and links of andouille. Next to the roux, a pot of rice was cooking on the stove. The heat made the air shimmer and Bray watched it, imagining it to be a tear in the fabric of the world.

“You never said nothing about a hog.”

Abigail looked at him sharply. “I told you when you said that white dog running around. I told you not to go looking for strange creatures.”

It happened upon my path, sister, Bray did not say. The hog had been pale as milk with bright green eyes, just like the dog Bray had seen. Bray had been yelling in the woods with Eli, daring him to go knock on Old Man Bergeron’s door. Then he couldn’t hear Eli at all. Couldn’t hear nothing, no birds or insects. Then the hog appeared. It had looked at him, acknowledged Bray with those scary-bright eyes, and ran off into the woods again. Bray had itched to touch it.

“What am I avoiding, sister?” Bray pitched his voice high and young, hoping Abigail heard it as concern and not curiosity.

Abigail sighed, stirring her roux. “You got a loup-garou after you, boy.”

Bray had heard talk of loup-garous. The adults in the Compound used them as ghost stories, but Bray knew better. They, like all things of the bayou, were real. “They take bad children away.”

“That’s right,” Abigail said, turning to look at him.

Bray grinned a powerful grin. “I should be long gone, then, sister. You and Miss Teacher tell me I’m no good all the time.”

“I ain’t the same as your teacher, Bray. You don’t listen to her and her book-learning. I tell you true things, you understand?”

Bray nodded. Abigail told him only true things, sensible things. She told him how to win the other boys in the Compound over with his words, how to make sure others dirtied their hands in his name. She told him things at night too, whispered that Bray would be the savior of them all.

“Good. Now you heard the stories, so you avoid that thing. After supper, you put thirteen stones outside, you hear? Loup-garou can’t count to thirteen. Only twelve.”

“I will, sister.”

And after supper Bray placed the thirteen stones outside their door. He and Abigail played cards, gossiped about the other members of the Compound - the Rowan boy was looking strong, Abigail said. Might be wise to get him on your good side.

It wasn’t long before Abigail went to off to her bed. Bray stayed awake. When he heard Abigail’s light snoring he pulled his big boots back on, willing the door not to creak as he stepped outside. When the door closed safely, Bray kicked the stones away. “I’m here,” he whispered to the bayou.

As Bray walked along, his path lit by moonlight, he could hear the animals. Barn owl screeches and the skittering of mice, the voices of yellow-crowned night herons calling to each other, chorus frogs croaking out their frog-song. The loup-garou wasn’t here, then. Idly he wondered what form it would take this time.

Me too, Bray thought, thinking of the creature’s shapeshifting ways. He played the dutiful student for Miss Teacher, the leader for the group of Compound boys, the eager disciple for Abigail. He knew in his bones he would gain more forms as the years went on, and perhaps the loup-garou was the same.

Bray imagined his most comfortable form, his truest one, would be the savior. When he took it on for the universe he would not take it off. All others would be inferior, but they could find salvation by Bray’s side. He savored the way the thought tasted.

It was then he heard only his thoughts. The loup-garou was here. It had come for him.

The beast had taken a humanoid form. It reached with one white-furred hand to Bray, looking with its eyes, luminous bottle-green as the cans of Coke Bray got as treats.

Bray’s hand was shaking as he held it to the beast. “You and me, we’re the same, we save,” he told it, and touched the beast’s paw.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](praetorian-guard.tumblr.com)


End file.
